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Marriage Material

That dude in the Princess and the Pea sure knows how to pick ‘em. A woman so delicate she somehow manages to be bruised by a pea hidden under a ridiculous amount of mattresses -might- not be marriage material. But hey, if he likes a woman that will undoubtedly shatter like glass when he tries to hug her, I guess that’s his call.

It has got to be a difficult life for that poor woman.

I don’t really do a lot of fairy tale (not folklore) comics and I’ll tell you why: I largely dislike the messages they convey. There’s a great deal of imagination there and whimsy for a lifetime, but the way that the morals are imparted (not to mention some of the morals themselves) is a little difficult for me to deal with. A large amount of fairy tale literature deals with themes and characters I find fairly annoying, particularly royalty and royal figures and the stories often haven’t got much good to say about women.

While mythology may not be the most enlightened area with regards to gender roles and the like, I’ve found fairy tales to be much more offensive in a number of ways. While their male characters may not be the most fully developed figures in literature, their female characters almost always fall into a few basic stereotypes. You’ve got your princesses, your queens, your peasant girls or wives, and, of course, your witches. Not only that, but these characters only have a few basic personality types as well! Either the woman is kind but meek and (most importantly in the story) beautiful, or she’s willful with a crooked disposition (which usually results in terrible things happening to her). Having read a fair amount of fairy tales, I can almost count on one hand the number of good, strong female characters I’ve come across within them. The sad bit is that, even for these few great heroines, the outcome of their story is usually just to be married to some dude. What a reward!

Of course, that was life back in the day. Women weren’t expected to live up to their enormous potential or they were, at best, expected to live up to the potential that patriarchal societies set for them. You were to be a good wife, a fertile mother, and (if you were lucky) a good-looking lass and that was it. In the vast majority of cultures since the advent of male dominated societies, women were not expected to take jobs, earn money, or have adventures. It was so unexpected that people didn’t even imagine it or come up with stories that might contain such things. Even in fiction, these roles were reserved primarily for men.

So if that’s just how it was, why get upset over it? Nobody really needs to go on a crusade nowadays, but it’s important to note the effect stories have on culture. Many children (boys and girls) were read fairy tale stories at very young ages and these tales help them to understand their role in society, even if the concepts presented are fairly archaic. While TV has largely replaced storytelling as the entertainment media of choice for all ages in Western countries, fairy tales are still told around the world or become part of modern media. It’s sad to think about all the children through history that have been influenced into thinking the beautiful princess was the only character to idolize in their stories simply because they didn’t have any other options.

When you’re presented with willful women that turn out to be witches or passive female characters that get to marry royalty, it isn’t really surprising.

That said, it’s still possible to read and appreciate fairy tales for what they are, just not with this particular issue. Thankfully, we live in a time where gender equality in fiction is -starting- to shift. Even Disney movies are trying to give young girls proper role models, though they aren’t always perfect.

Personally, I’m just glad ladies have a little more freedom nowadays. If all you’ve got available to you is witch or passive wife, you -know- some people are going to become witches.

And I’m afraid we just don’t have enough babies to feed all the witches we’d have in the world thanks to that choice.

Note: I am joking about goofy story-witches, NOT modern wiccan witches. (Before people start commenting on THAT haha)

Hmm, I was thinking the diagnosis to be more hemophilia,
hence the ease of bruising.
I thought in the original story though she trick the prince…
then again I don’t and haven’t read fairytales in such a long time.
The only ones I really bother reading are usually Grimm’s.

My impression of the story was always that she was so spoiled as a result of living a coddled rich life that the slightest flaw or tiniest hint of discomfort was cause for big drama. She was so accustomed to perfect royal bedding that the slightest imperfection to her felt as unignorable as a log.

It wasn’t so much, “you will know a princess by her frailness” but rather “you will know a princess by her spoiled-ness”.

That wouldn’t make great marriage material either, but this is medieval society we’re talking about. If you were a prince, you were expected to marry someone of similar or preferably greater social standing. What kind of person they were be damned, advancing the family’s political and business connections was *the* point of marriage. Lots of fairy tales have this element where a prince or princess is DESPERATELY looking for another prince/princess to marry, and the whole thing revolves around either someone trying to become or prove themselves royalty so they can marry the prince/princess, or the prince/princess trying to find a royal suitor or vet the royalty of their suitors. That the suitor must be royalty is always both a given and the sole important point.

Even as a kid, “The Princess and the Pea” to me read like a commoner’s satire of royalty rather than a romantic tale. It’s actually a little weird to see the story presented the way it is here without a wink or a nod in the blogpost or the comments; apparently treating the “fragile” thing as the actual legit interpretation instead of just the gag. I’ve never actually encountered that interpretation before, is it really that common?

There’s a wider world of folklore out there! Fairy tales focusing on your knights and princesses, with their problematic gender relations, are hardly representative of the whole; in fact, they’re just a very specific type of story that happened to have been popular around the time of the first major concentrated efforts to document folktales in print. The mores contained therein were amplified, perhaps to the detriment of later ages.

My favorite source for them is Folktexts, where all manner of stories are conveniently sorted according to the Aarne-Thompson Classification System and other instructive categories. I’m certain you’ll find it of interest.

Many folktales are quite subversive! A close reading also reveals awkward attitudes toward the mentally ill, and there’s evidence of a conflict between the old and the young that’s been raging since the dawn of time. You’ll also find some more positive examples of female role models, as well as some that are far worse than any damsel-in-distress fantasy. It’s a cross-section of the attitudes and thoughts of historical and ancient mankind, and, as such, can be expected to be as diverse as anything you see in the modern day.

Oh yeah, that’s why I clarified (not folklore) in the first paragraph. A lot of folklore has a better variety (though still not great) of female characters. Fairy Tales, the sort of stereotypical European stuff, is more what I’m talking about here. I also have the link you included in my bookmarks bar, it’s amazing!

That said, even the majority of folkore (from all over the world) depicts women in a more shallow light than their male counterparts. Traditional folklore has a wider gradient of characters in general, I’ve found, but most of it still isn’t really up to snuff with more modern (or super ancient) views on women, but it is better

Ponies are the answer to this problem! Even the greatest fashonista of the main characters, who would never get her hooves dirty without a damn good reason, kicked a manticore in the face in the first episode. The rest of the main characters show a variety of personalities and skills that show any little girl that she does not need to be a barbie doll. Lauren Faust, creator of the show, made it specifically with that goal in mind. All the stuff she has worked on has strong, individual and varied female characters.

I know right, which is why it’s an excellent show!
Not only “just for girls” but for everyone. It really is a great “family” show to watch, after all some of the references would of course go right over the heads of kid’s these days!
Lauren Faust, is and has been an excellent show writer/producer/everything.
Heck even the Power Puff Girls, weren’t “girly”!

Everyone in those Euro folk tales has a sense of smell and kinesia of a sort, but this seems to be a subtly embedded inbreeding (royals only, after all) joke, unless you want to up and make a case for Lupus over Down’s, xyy, hemophilia, athsma and…fealty systems, I suppose.

[Chorus:] It’s never lupus.

That’s nice about Lauren Faust, but take us past the creds and tell us what’s greenlit for the coming seasons and Faust Fanclub, will you? I look up agents and then get distracted, you see…

Because it WASN’T A REAL FAIRYTALE. It was a social satire in a fairytale convention, written by Hans Christian Andersen. There is a difference between real old folklore fairy tales and modern literature.

It’s hard to call something a “fake” fairy tale. Anderson’s intention was to write stories for children that they might enjoy and while he may have used some of his own life experiences and thrown in a little social commentary, anything terribly deep or subtle would be lost on the audience he hoped to impress.

There is also a big difference between folklore and fairy tales and nobody is saying that Anderson was a collector of Folklore rather than an author of children’s fairy tales.

I guess I’m not sure what the point of this comment is or who it is directed at, the only reason I didn’t moderate it out was because it didn’t seem to be particularly insulting or anything like that.

On that note, I’d like to say that I’d be more than happy to Marry a prince, but no princes want me probably because I’m socially awkward and don’t like having to give up my free time for the commitment of a relationship. :/